Financial Times (London)
March 17, 2003
Monday London Edition 1 

Mission to advance relationships

FLETCHER SCHOOL: The US Defence Department is working with a university to provide graduate education for future leaders

By Sarah Murray 

As the US once again finds itself centre stage in the geopolitical arena, it is perhaps timely that the country's Defence Department is planning to send many of its senior staff on a graduate programme in international affairs. 

In March 2004, a group of Defence Department employees will embark on the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy's Global Master of Arts Programme (GMAP). 

And with topics such as "the potential peace dividend for the Gaza Strip", on offer, it is not hard to see the appeal for the military as it looks to equip its staff for a world in which international relations are becoming more complex and military personnel are required to make better-informed decisions than ever before. 

This is not the first time the US military has worked with a university to provide graduate education to senior staff. The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, for example, has a partnership with the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, whereby military personnel in the Washington area can take a combined MBA degree. 

But the partnership recently announced with the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts represents the first time the Defence Department has turned to this kind of programme to help train its future leaders. 

"The need isn't just for more efficient business-like practices but for understanding the world in which the military and the US are operating," says Deborah Nutter, senior associate dean at the Fletcher School. 

"A leader has to understand every aspect of the environment in which he or she is operating." 

In securing the Defence Department contract, Fletcher's timing was fortuitous. The school happened to be developing the original GMAP just as the department was looking for an international master's degree through which to broaden the education of some of its senior staff. 

"We have a large community of people working in security co-operation with other countries of the world," says Lieutenant General Tome Walters , director of the Defence Security Co-operation Agency at the office of the secretary of defence. "And we had identified a need for more professional education, particularly for government civilian employees." 

But what also attracted the Defence Department to the school's programme was its international character. The interdisciplinary programme covers topics such as negotiation, trade, economics and politics from a global perspective. More than half its students are from outside the US and Stephen Bosworth, Fletcher's dean, has been US ambassador to Tunisia, the Philippines and South Korea. 

It is not only the Pentagon that is showing keen interest in this area. Prof Nutter says that the school has experienced a huge growth in interest in its GMAP since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. 

"We've always seen the need to be trained in an interdisciplinary and international fashion - but since September 11 it's become so much more clear," she says. 

Last year, applications for the two-year residential masters programme increased by 60 per cent. "Some of that is the weak economy," says Prof Bosworth. "And we have made major efforts to strengthen our recruitment process. But a lot of it reflects an appreciation of the importance of trying to understand this world in which we find ourselves." 

The original GMAP - launched in 2000 - is aimed at middle- to senior-level staff with at least eight years' professional experience. Of the 40 or so students in each cohort, some have MBAs or PhDs but others have opted for the Fletcher qualification instead of an MBA. 

Students come to the Fletcher School campus for two of the programme's three 14-day residencies, while the third takes place at an international location. Between the residencies, participants conduct studies online. 

For the Defence Department, the ability to work remotely and to conduct the residencies in Boston and Washington was another reason for choosing the Fletcher programme. 

"In the military, where we have to move so often, sending people to a university for a year is hard on the families," says Gen Walters . 

"This programme could be done in three two-week sessions on the Tufts campus - taught by resident faculty. It avoided a big problem for the people we hope to bring on to the programme." 

An emphasis on teamwork ensures that the group interacts frequently at a distance. Students are divided into teams of four to six people and halfway through the programme they are mixed up into new teams. 

"Every personal interaction at the school is duplicated on the website - except for friendship; but even that's there, because two people could be on e-mail together," Prof Nutter says. 

The current student cohort comes from diverse backgrounds. About 50 per cent of students are in the corporate sector, 25 per cent come from the world of aid agencies and civil groups - including, this year, five from the United Nations - and 25 per cent from government ministries. 

This year's group includes the head of the Bank of Oman, managing director of the Philippine National Bank in Europe and a member of the Mexican government. "So it's a very interesting group," says Prof Nutter. 

For the Defence Department's version - GMAP 2 - two-thirds of the students are expected to come from the military, mainly mid-level civilian personnel, with some uniformed officers among them. They will be joined by people from other government agencies and international executives from the corporate world. 

In embarking on the GMAP, the Pentagon's immediate mission is to help its staff manage defence relationships with foreign governments and defence companies. 

"We build relations in peacetime so we can have influence and access in times of crisis and be interoperable when we need to work together," says Gen Walters . 

And as it manages a change in terms of its civilian employees, the Pentagon wants to sharpen the skills and knowledge of the next batch of senior staff. 

For Prof Bosworth, there is an even broader mission. "There's an understanding that we're dealing with a far more complicated world than we were during most of the postwar period - so we need different educational perspectives and standards," he says, "and the events of September 11 and after have driven that home."